Divine Evil

come.
    Since then, kids had enjoyed scaring themselves over campfires with stories of Junior Dopper's ghost, headless and shambling, hunting forever in Dopper's Woods.
    The Antietam Creek cut through the Doppers′ south pasture, slashed through the woods, where Junior had taken that final slide, and meandered into town. After a good rain, it bubbled noisily under the stone bridge on Gopher Hole Lane.
    A half mile out of town it widened, cutting a rough circle out of rock and trees. There the water moved slow and easy and let the sunlight dance on it through the shelter of leaves in the summer. A man could find himself a comfortable rock and sink a line, and if he wasn't too drunk or stupid, take home trout for supper.
    Beyond the fishing hole, the land started its jagged upward climb. There was a limestone quarry on the second ridge where Cam had worked for two sweaty, backbreakingsummers. On hot nights kids would ride up there, mostly high on beer or pot, and dive off the rocks into the deep, still water below. In seventy-eight, after three kids had drowned, the quarry was fenced off and posted. Kids still dived into the quarry on hot summer nights. They just climbed the fence first.
    Emmitsboro was too far from the interstate for much traffic, and being a two-hour drive from D.C., it had never qualified as one of the city's bedroom communities. The changes that took place were few and far between, which suited the residents just fine.
    It boasted a hardware store, four churches, an American Legion post, and a clutch of antique shops. There was a market that had been run by the same family for four generations and a service station that had changed hands more times than Cam could count. A branch of the county library stood at the square and was open two afternoons a week and Saturday mornings. They had their own sheriff, two deputies, a mayor, and a town council.
    In the summer the trees were leafy, and if you strolled in the shade, you smelled fresh-cut grass rather than exhaust. People took pride in their homes, and flower and kitchen gardens were in evidence in even the tiniest yards.
    Come autumn, the surrounding mountains went wild with color, and the scent of woodsmoke and wet leaves filtered along the streets.
    In the winter it was a postcard, a scene from
It's a Wonderful Life
, with snow banking the stone walls and Christmas lights burning for weeks.
    From a cop's point of view, it was a cakewalk. The occasional vandalism-kids soaping windows or breaking them-traffic violations, the weekly drunk-and-disorderly or domestic dispute. In the years he had been back, Cam had dealt with one assault-and-battery, some petty theft, ahalf dozen malicious mischiefs, occasional bar fights, and a handful of DWI's.
    Not even enough to fill one good night of work in Washington, D.C., where he'd been a cop for more than seven years.
    When he'd made the decision to resign in D.C. and return to Emmitsboro, his associates had told him he'd be back in six months, screaming with boredom. He had a reputation for being a real street cop, by turns icy and explosive, accustomed, even acclimated, to facing down junkies and dealers.
    And he'd liked it, liked the feeling of walking on the edge, cruising the streets, sweeping up bits and pieces of human garbage. He'd made detective, an ambition he'd held secret inside him since the day he joined the force. And he'd stayed on the streets because he felt at home there, because he felt right.
    But then, one dripping summer afternoon, he and his partner had chased a twenty-year-old petty dealer and his screaming hostage into a crumbling building in South East.
    Everything had changed.
    “Cameron?” A hand on Cam's shoulder broke him out of his reverie. He looked up at Emmitsboro's mayor.
    “Mr. Atherton.”
    “Mind if I join you?” With a quick smile, James Atherton settled his long, thin body into the vinyl seat opposite Cam. He was a man of angles, with a bony, slightly melancholy face and pale blue eyes-an Ichabod Crane of a man-white, freckled skin, sandy hair, long neck, long limbs.
    There was a ballpoint pen and a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses in the pocket of his sports coat. He always wore sports coats and shiny black, laced shoes. Cam couldn'trecall seeing Atherton in tennis shoes, or jeans or shorts. He was fifty-two and looked like what he was, a high school science teacher and public servant. He had been mayor of Emmitsboro, hardly a full-time job, since Cam was a